Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Hello, high season. There isn't just Beer Week and Choice Eats coming up. We've got a fundraiser for Slow Food NYC, a talk about one of the most influential food writers of all time, and a food culture conference. So let's get to it.

First, the evening of Thursday, April 11th, Slow Food NYC is throwing on their annual party, the (s)low down at Brooklyn's The Invisible Dog. This year part of the proceeds go to their Urban Harvest program which helps schools in the South Bronx, Harlem, the Lower East Side, and East New York, plus runs gardens in Brooklyn and South Africa. The guest of honor will be none other than the legendary--and honestly, one of the best guys in the industry--Bill Telepan. There's all sorts of delicious cocktails, food, and general hobnobbing. Tickets are a bit on the pricier side (for me at least, but then again, I'm a grad student) starting at $95.

If you don't know who Marion Cunningham is, you should stop right now, read this and then make some coffeecake. Yes, she only revised "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook." Here I am sometimes getting dismayed by my age in grad school (I'm surrounded by 20somethings) and she didn't start her professional career until 50! Judith Jones (another legend), Laura Shapiro, and James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Barbara Kafka are going to sit down this Thursday evening and discuss her career and influence as a part of The New School's Culinary Luminaries series. Tickets are $5 (or possibly free).

Lastly, over two days in April, a bunch of us academic food people who do scholarly things are going to nerd out at The New School on "Food and Immigrant Life: The Role of Food in Forced Migration, Migrant Labor, and Recreating Home," a topic that fits in perfectly with my class to Mexico. They're going to talk about all sorts of fun things: food scarcity's role in migration, climate change's role in migration, migrant women's labor(!). But most of you will probably be interested in Friday afternoon session where the panels will discuss "Re-creating Home in the United States" aka why the US has such a diverse medley of cuisines and why we can get near-authentic cuisine throughout the country.

The Social Research conference will be taking place at The New School on April 18th and 19th. It's $45 for the full conference, $15 for each session, and a bunch of different ways to go for free or just buy a transcript. More info on this here.